The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-15
RURAL LITERATURE.
Boston Courier.

bOstOn Courlef.
 One of the features in recent litera- ture which is especially curious is the great popularity of writers who de- vote themselves to the study and the description of nature pure and sim pie. Men like John Burroughs, who describe with loving minuteness the habits and the peculiarities of plants and of animals, who concern them selves with the ever varying shades of natures moods, have found an au- dience eager and wide, and have achieved popularity only second to the creators of romantic fiction. Every magazine editor recognizes this taste and sets himself to cater to it., and there has sprung up a body of literature inconsiderable neither in quantity nor in quality, of which the portrayal of nature, animate and inan- innate, is the deliberate and carefully studied purpose.
 The first inference from this might easily be that the active love of nature had largely increased in the present generation; and such theory would not be wholly inexact. The modern fashion of passing large portion of the year in the country has brought about a certain familiarity with ma ture, without which the class of works of which we speak would be, if not unintelligible, at least so far outside the lines of ordinary experience as to fail of apprec.atiYe comprehension. The present generation has become acquainted with nature on it's aesthetic side in a way undreamed of by our fathers. They know somewhat of the country on the workaday side, but it was only when the world went into the country to pass it's leisure instead of to earn it's bread by the sweat of the brow that men began to under stand and to love the poetic and the beautiful in natural objects. It is also doubtless true that the fact that the aesthetic side of society has been developed on all sides has it's share in stimulating an admiration of natural beauty, sometimes genuine and sometimes conventional so that those who are really little moved by it un- derstand at least what they are ex- pected to feel, and deport themselves accordingly.
 The increased appreciation of liter ary style, too, has much to do with the hold that rural literature has taken upon the reading public of to- day. The writer who describes nature is at once unaided and untrammelled by the excitement of narrative, and forced to depend upon grace of dic- tion, aptness of expression and refine- ments of style to which, despite the success of trashy works, it is evident the reader of to-day is more suscepti- ble than were those who before him shaped the direction of American lit erature. The genuine feeling for lit crary quality which, however ob- scured, shows itself on every hand is one of the mast encouraging literary signs of the times.
 There are undoubtedly subtiler req sons than these why rural literature has obtained so strong hold. Per- haps the marked avoidance of senti- ment towards our fellow creatures renders us thankful for channel into which the emotions may safely be turned without exposing one to the charge of sentimentalism. It is safe to feel moved by the moods and the beauties of nature when it might be dangerous to give ourselves up to too strong sentiment over human con- cerns. Nobody reproaches us by be- ing deeply touched by the pathetic beauty of woodland tragedy in ani- nal life, or for becoming enthusiastic over the loveliness of scenery or of plants or flowers. There is, too, a mildly soothing effect in this litera- ture most grateful to the fevered senses of our perturbed generation; a restlessness akin to the presence of na- ture itself. Whatever be the causes, it is at least evident that the hold of these writings is a strong one. and they are so soothing, so elevating and so healthful that it is most heartily hoped that it may be lasting as we'll.